


Must Love Dogs

by terminallybored



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Drunk Driving, M/M, Poor Vehicle Safety Practices Abound, Pre-Relationship, Season 2, no actual dogs were harmed in the making of this story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-23 12:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23378017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terminallybored/pseuds/terminallybored
Summary: A typical prelude to a typical love story. Boy driving slightly (very) intoxicated hits dog. Boy goes to his pretty boy rival's house for help. Dog may or may not be of the inter-dimensional variety.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 18
Kudos: 159





	Must Love Dogs

The yellow lines in the middle of the road keep swaying. Billy tries to keep the Camaro between them, but the lazy turns keep taking him off guard. And they go on forever. Sometimes Billy kind of forgets to pay attention to them until he feels the pull of grass under his tires and jerks himself back onto the road. The lines are always back where they should have been then, if he’d only pay attention. And they stay there, until they don’t, and then start to sway away again.

He rolls his window down and lets the fresh air pelt him in the face. It’s cool, bordering on cold. Autumn in Indiana bites where the season in California just drifted in and out. The cold air clears his head a little and he scrubs a hand over his face.

Eight beers (or was it ten?) and shooting the shit with Tommy seemed like a great way to spend an evening, right up until the part where he drove himself over, ergo had to drive himself back. He can’t leave his car somewhere. Least of all somewhere Tommy could touch her. Who knows what he might do to her? So he and the swaying road are just gonna have to make peace.

The roads along the woods don’t get many cops, and that’s a good thing. That’s why Billy is using it, despite the trees leaning and swaying along the sides. The reason the road doesn’t get many cops is because it also doesn’t have many streetlights. That’s a less good thing. It’s hard to tell if the haze at the corner of his vision is from the booze or just getting too far from the last streetlight.

Billy only barely sees it when something darts in front of his car.

He jerks the wheel. The car swerves, but he already knows it’s too slow. That one is definitely on the beers.

There’s a solid impact and the Camaro comes down rough as it rides over something bigger than it was meant to. Billy jostles hard enough to hit his head on the ceiling. He tries once, twice, finally gets his foot in the right place to mash on the brakes. The tires lock, scream against the asphalt. The whole car rocks sharply as it comes to an abrupt stop.

Billy sits in the sudden silence. His heart is pounding and he thinks at least two of those beers are coming back up. When he scrabbles for the lock, his hands shake and fumble slightly, but he’s too keyed up to remind himself not to be a pussy.

Road gravel crunches under his feet and the world still wants to sway under him. His head might be feeling cleared by the adrenaline, but it’s turned his muscles to jelly. He stumbles forward to the edge of his headlights at the still, crumpled form laying on the street. Four legs. A tail.

He hit a dog. Billy makes a half-slurred sound of distress, because... shit. He likes dogs. He tries to crouch down beside it, but the street tries to buck him off and he winds up sitting on his ass instead. Tentatively, he sets a hand on it... fuck, it’s already loosing body heat, slightly cool under his fingers.

It whines.

Billy starts backwards when the dog whines at him and it tries to lift its head. Something is wrong with its head, but it’s too dark and Billy is too drunk to tell what. It lays its head back down and goes still.

“Hey. Hey, no,” Billy protests, trying to shake it back awake. “No, no, no, don’t do that.”

The dog is still.

Fuck.

“Okay, buddy. Don’t you worry. We’re gonna find a vet,” he promises, hauling himself to his feet. Well. First he needs a ride because he sure as hell can’t show up like this anywhere. Not in a small town where no one minds their business. “It’s okay,” he tells the dog as he hefts it up into his arms. The whole thing is cool to the touch and heavy as hell. God, he hopes that doesn’t mean it’s already dead. Fuck. “Just hang on, man, I know a guy.”

Billy loads the dog into his trunk, feeling bad about it but he’s not in any shape to try and navigate getting it into his backseat. Then he gets back in the car and puts it in drive, heading for Loch Nora.

* * *

Steve has no idea who’s knocking on his door at past 1 in the morning. He should ignore it. There’s been no phone call from say, Hopper or Joyce or Nancy. No... _sigh_... walkie-talkie communication (he’s not sure why he let Dustin give him one of those) from the kids. So he’s not expecting anyone. However, recent experience has taught him that the world can and will just start to end without proper notice, and that has him dragging his ass downstairs in his boxers and a t-shirt to make sure there’s not another goddamn gate opening in his backyard or something.

It’s not Dustin at the door. Or Hopper with his gun out or El with half her collar soaked in blood. It’s Billy Hargrove.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks. He doesn’t mean to sound like he cares (because Billy is an asshole and Steve _doesn’t_ care), but Billy is sweating hard and swaying slightly on his feet. At first Steve thinks he might have just had to outrun something. Then Billy opens his mouth.

“Get your keys, pretty boy. Emergency.”

Steve steps back a step, waving a hand in front of his face. “Jesus, Hargrove, how fucking much did you _drink?_ ”

“Few beers.” Billy grabs Steve’s arm and hauls him out of the house. “Emergency, did you hear me? You’re the emergency person around here.”

“Since when?” Steve scrambles for his keys as he’s being pulls out onto the front step. He has to physically fight his way back to actually get the door closed while Billy is dead-set on dragging him out to the driveway. The driveway, where the Camaro is sitting. “Jesus fucking Christ, were you _driving_ like this??”

Billy just grunts, stumbling to the back of his car. “Save the lecture, mama bird.”

Steve fights down the nausea at the idea of Billy driving a muscle car when he can barely stand up, and instead goes to see what’s happening at the trunk of the Camaro. Billy trying to get his trunk open is what’s happening, and the key finding the lock is what’s not happening. Steve finally just grabs the key. Billy’s gonna be pissed if he scratches the shit out of his own paint job with the key, and he’ll probably yell at Max for it for whatever reason.

“What’s the big emergency?” Steve asks as he grabs the lip of the trunk and lifts it up. “Did y—” Steve abruptly stumbles back a step. “What the _hell_??”

Inside the trunk, dumped on top of old gym clothes, is a demodog. The streetlights reflect off the smooth skin and the… petals or whatever on the head are limp and sagging against the floor of the trunk. Steve takes another step back and catches the back of Billy’s collar, trying to pull him back as well.

“Hey!” Billy, already not steady on his feet, stumbles back several steps. Steve is completely unprepared for how much Billy and his goddamn muscles actually _weigh_ , and his knees buckle. The hard pavement against his back knocks his breath out of his lungs even before Billy lands on top of him.

Steve needs a minute to get his breath back and decide that no, he’s not actually hurting. Just winded. And pinned. And too tired for the bullshit that he is clearly going to need to deal with now. He sighs and lets the back of his head drop against the cold pavement. Billy is swearing and sort of squirming, which Steve thinks is him trying to get up except it’s not working very well. He finally gives a hard shove to dump Billy onto his back in the grass before his dick does something he’s going to have to explain.

“—the _fuck_ , Harrington?!” Billy is still swearing and sort of propped up on one arm, but also not looking sure of where to go from there. “You never seen a goddamn dog before?”

“That’s not a _dog_ , man!” Steve pauses and cranes his neck to look into the trunk again to be sure, because Billy seems pretty sure of himself. Nope. Lean, corded muscles covered in that taut skin, those disconcerting flaps that make an approximation of a head... that’s a demodog. He pushes himself up off the ground. “Where did you even find this?”

“Okay, so it’s not gonna win any kennel club prizes. Don’t be a fucking snob.” Billy slaps Steve’s offered hand away and grabs the lip of his open trunk, using the Camaro as an anchor to haul himself up. “I hit it, okay? Now get your car, we need to take it to a vet.”

Steve has... so very many questions to that. Where the hell was Billy driving to run into one of these? How fast was he going to actually damage it? Do cars somehow do what bullets haven’t so far? He turns to Billy, not actually sure if he’s sober enough to answer any of that, only to find him hefting the demodog out of the trunk, cradling it like it’s just a big golden retriever and not a fucking inter-dimensional monster.

“Car!” Billy yells, waiting by the back door of the Beamer. Steve fumbles with his keys and rushes over, mainly because he doesn’t want his neighbors waking up and calling the cops or something. Loud noises scare the Old Money crowd in this neighborhood.

“Billy. That thing is a monster,” he says, slow and careful and fuck, he hopes Billy is paying attention. “This town has actual monsters sometimes.”

Billy just kind of stares at him, bleary-eyed and swaying slightly.

“So when I open the door, drop it and get in.” Steve pushes the key into the lock slowly. Every goddamn tooth on the key is scraping too loudly. He turns the key slowly.

 _Ka-chunk_. The lock pops up.

Steve feels like that sound is going to wake the whole neighborhood, or at least it should. Did it make the demodog... twitch? Shiver? Did it—

Billy uses his shoulder to ram Steve aside, halfway tossing the demodog over his shoulder so he can yank the door open. “I get it, Harrington, you’re a dog-hating whore. Now move your ass before I kick it.”

And then he’s dropping himself into the passenger seat, arms full of demodog, and slamming the door shut. Steve stares at the passenger side of the car, waiting, heart pounding, breath held. There’s no screaming. No thrashing. It doesn’t seem like the noise or the jostling has woken the thing up. Yet. Billy flips him the bird and makes the ‘hurry up’ motion at him.

Steve picks himself up and glares through the windshield at where Billy is rubbing that fucking monster’s flank with unnerving tenderness. He unlocks the drivers’ side door, maybe a little less gingerly because if that thing wakes up now he can still run and Billy’s stupid ass is the only one that’ll get eaten. It doesn’t wake up. It’s still laying motionless in Billy’s arms when he opens the door. Fucking hell, he’s going to have to at least get this thing out of the neighborhood and figure it out from there.

“I don’t hate dogs,” he hisses at Billy, as fierce as he can make a whisper. “And I’m not a whore. How does that even make me a whore?”

“Why are you whispering?” Billy whispers back. “Stop being a pussy and let’s go.”

Steve does not put on his seat belt. He’ll risk a trip through the windshield vs. losing precious seconds if they need to abandon the car when that thing wakes up. “Okay, I really hope you’re sober enough to understand some of this,” he says, backing out of the driveway and out onto the street. 

Right around the part where Steve is explaining the life cycle of a demogorgon, which he himself only sort of understands, something begins... wheezing. Steve’s fingers lock around the steering wheel— he’s only halfway to the woods, they’re still driving past houses full of innocent, sleeping people.

He stops talking. The car falls dead silent. Except the wheezing.

Steve looks over slowly, expecting to meet Billy’s wide, terrified eyes. Expecting to share a moment of dread before they’re both ripped to shreds.

Another wheeze.

It’s not the demodog.

It’s Billy. Billy, who has fallen asleep. He’s snoring, face pressed into the monster’s neck. Steve is starting to wonder if the thing might have actually died, to be getting manhandled this much and still not waking up. Fuck, is Billy Hargrove cuddling a dead demodog in his car? This is Steve’s life now.

Steve sighs and puts his attention back on the road. He’s not sure enough in his ability to tell when one of those things is dead vs just stunned, so he’s sticking to his original plan. Hopefully both of them just... stay the fuck asleep or passed out or whatever they are for a while longer.

The woods have closed in around the car when Steve finally pulls it to a stop. This is as far from other people as he can make it while still getting back to town by sunrise. And he’s as far into the woods as he can go with something as big as the Beamer. The trees are too thick in front of him now. It’ll have to be on foot the rest of the way.

Through all the jostling of leaving the road, all the sizable branches snapping under the tires, all the underbrush scraping the undercarriage of his car, neither Billy nor the demodog have woken up. The level of trashed Billy had to be is a little bit impressive, honestly. Steve switches on his high beams, watching as a few more trees come out of the shadows. Not many, though. That bought him a few more feet, at the most.

“This is so fucking stupid,” Steve mutters as he shoves his door open and comes around to Billy’s side, tiny sticks and dead leaves jabbing the bottom of his feet and making him wish he’d insisted on grabbing his shoes. And some pants. And a jacket. Too late for all that now, though.

He’s still careful while opening the passenger door, and there’s a weird moment where he’s just sort of... looking at the biggest asshole in town and a literal monster mashed into a single car seat and it looks... weirdly peaceful. Steve isn’t even sure how that’s working in his brain, because the demodog doesn’t even have a face.

Steve says a short prayer that the demodog stays exactly as stunned/unconscious/dead as it has been the entire ride before he leans in, looking for a way to get his arms around it. It puts his face uncomfortably close to Billy’s, since he’s clutching the stupid thing so closely. There might be some fleeting considerations that Billy’s face is not entirely terrible, but every snore hits with the sour stench of beer and ruins everything. Steve turns his head away and wedges an arm between Billy and the demodog. The hide is cool to the touch, but still pliable, and Steve is going to assume it’s just unconscious to be on the safe side. He needs to be quick, in case it gets un-unconscious again soon.

Hooking the other arm under the demodog’s flank, he hefts the weight up and has a brief tug-of-war with Billy, who doesn’t let go as readily as he had hoped. A few stumbling steps back from the car and Billy’s arms slide free and fall into his lap. Steve hikes the demodog higher in his arms, getting a better grip before he heads into the woods with it, following the hard beam of his headlights.

* * *

Billy wakes up to the unpleasant sensation of being shaken, hard. He tries to move away but there’s something blocking him in, which, when he finally pries his eyes open, turns it to be a car door. Steve’s car door. Right. He’s in Steve’s car. Being shaken awake by Steve.

“Billy,” Steve is whispering. And still fucking shaking him. “Wake up, man. You’re home.”

Billy squints at the house. There’s two of them and both are sort of hazy around the edges but... yeah, that’s his. He glances at his lap. Then the backseat. Empty.

“Where the hell is the dog?” he asks.

“You slept through the trip to the vet,” Steve says, glancing away and back out the windshield. “They made a few calls and found the owner.”

“...oh.” Billy isn’t sure how he feels about that. Drunk. He feels drunk. And not sad at all. “Did they fix it? Was it okay?”

“Yeah,” Steve says immediately. “Yeah, it was just… stunned.”

“Was it a boy or a girl?”

“Uh… I didn’t ask.”

Billy doesn’t know why he asked either. That information is hardly relevant. At least he didn’t kill the thing. Maybe. Unless Harrington is coddling him like one of his damn kids. At least he didn’t say the thing was sent to live on a farm.

“Right. Alright.” He catches the door handle on the third try and shoves his door open. He should say thank you. Social graces pretty much demand at least that. “You did good, pretty boy.”

Good enough.

He slams the door and only wavers a little as he heads inside, doing his best to be quiet with the door. He’s not drunk enough to forget he needs to not wake the whole house up at this hour. Glancing back, he sees the Beamer still in the driveway, Harrington waiting like Billy is some chick who can’t be trusted to get inside safely. Billy flips him off halfheartedly before shutting the door.

He gets to his room just in time to see the car headlights sweep past his window, momentarily lighting up the edges around the curtain. The bed creaks lightly as he probably drops down harder than he means to, and then the world goes peaceful and black.

The second time Billy is jolted awake is by hammering on his door. Hard, meaty blows that make it rattle in the doorframe.

“Billy!” Neil yells from the other side. “Get your ass out here.”

Billy scrubs a hand over his face and wracks his pounding brain, trying to remember what he’s done recently that’s going to get his ass kicked. Did Neil hear him come in too late? No way, he wouldn’t have waited until morning if he heard. Delayed gratification is not his specialty.

“Billy. You better be awake in there.” Bang, bang, more banging on the door. Little preview of what’s coming his way, Billy guesses.

Did he leave the door open? No, Harrington was waiting around like a goddamn sappy boyfriend, and Billy definitely closed the door so he’d go the fuck away.

Fuck.

Harrington dropped him off. Billy’s car is in fucking Loch Nora, and not in the driveway where it belongs. Well, at least now he knows why he’s about to get his ass beat.

“ _William_!”

Billy winces at that. Full name. That’s not a good sign.

“If you don’t open the— what is that?”

It takes a second, but once Neil stops trying to take down his goddamn door, Billy can hear it as well. A sort of… rumble. Like a low, throaty growl.

Footsteps in the hallway stumble. “Wh— what in God’s name?”

Billy hauls himself from his bed just as a lot of sounds happen at once. Claws on wood, a body falling hard on the old floorboards of the hallway. Screaming. Something wet and… tearing.

Billy, who has never been the type to wait for bad shit to come to him, yanks the door open and steps out into the hallway. Shoulders back, chest out, full height. Game face on as if his brain isn’t trying to bash its way out of his skull from the inside.

Crouched over Neil’s prone body in the hallway is… at first Billy thinks it’s a dog. His dog, actually. Well, his in the sense that he slammed into it with his car. But in the morning sunlight, he can see the thing is all skin and muscle. It’s built… wrong, the muscles too big, the skin too leathery. Then it lifts its head and Billy sees the fleshy petals splayed wide, the flash of red meat inside, the crimson dripping from between the lower… jaws. They’re all jaws, Billy thinks.

The thing looks at him. Maybe. It doesn’t have eyes, not that Billy can see, but it certainly notices him. He tries to root himself in place, take the charge if he can… but the thing just climbs off Neil and plants its ass on the ground. The heavy tail thumps against the floorboards, the head up and sort of tilted, like it’s waiting. Behind it, Neil whimpers, cradling one arm where a dark stain is spreading over his shirt at the shoulder, and uses his feet to push himself backwards, away from it.

“…Good dog.”

* * *

Steve should not feel guilty. He saved Billy’s ass from a monster and even softened the blow by telling him that his imaginary dog went home and got its happy ending. Instead of telling his drunk ass that Steve hauled the monster off into the woods and left it there and he really hopes it was dead because otherwise it’s going to wake up and probably eat people. But he still feels guilty, because he lied and even as trashed as he was, Billy knew he was lying.

So Steve is climbing out of his car at 10 in the morning with a drink carrier in his hand. He can smell the bitter tang wafting out of the cup he ordered to be ‘black, as strong as you can make it without burning it, and actually burning it a little is fine if you have to.’ Billy should be sober by now unless he went right back to drinking, and they can have a more rational discussion that Billy will actually remember. Hopefully he takes the knowledge that they’re living one dimension away from a bunch of monsters well.

The door to the Hargrove house is… not really open. It’s closed and still in its frame, but the bottom half of it is just… missing. The wood is jagged and torn, like something ripped its way… in, judging by how the splintered boards are bent.

Steve knocks, because he’s had manners drilled into him way longer than self-preservation.

“Uh… Billy?”

The door is yanked open and Steve finds himself staring down a short, sturdy man with a severe haircut and red-rimmed eyes. Steve is so taken aback by the abject fear on his face that it takes him several seconds to notice that one arm is in a sling, the shoulder bulked out with bandaging.

“…Mr. Hargrove?” The guy doesn’t look a thing like Billy, but who else is this going to be? “Are you okay? Is Billy here?”

“In here, Harrington.” Billy’s voice comes from inside the house, fairly close by from the sound through the open door. The man just stands there, staring at Steve. His jaw trembles and his good hand comes up to clutch the forearm of the injured one. He doesn’t seem to be inclined to speak.

“I’m gonna… go see Billy,” Steve finally says, inching around the man, holding the drink carrier aloft. He turns to the living room, Billy’s coffee halfway pried from the carrier, and stops dead.

Billy is slouched low on the couch, dressed in his gym shorts and a hoodie, legs splayed indecently with his head tipped back to rest on the back of the couch. The demodog is spread out along the rest of the couch, the head resting on Billy’s thigh, tail draped over the far arm of the couch. Billy has a hand on the nape of its neck, rubbing it absently with the other arm flung across his eyes. He lifts the arm, and his head, and squints at Steve.

“Did you bring me coffee? Thank fuck.” He holds the hand out. “Gimme. I’m fixing to die over here from this fucking hangover.” The demodog lifts its head slightly to watch (if it even has eyes) Steve approach the couch. It makes a sort of warning rumble until Billy moves his hand to rub the muscular neck. “Be nice. That’s Steve. We like Steve.”

Steve numbly hands Billy his coffee, watching the demodog’s petals twitch a little and then… it lays its head back down. This is horrifying, but, Steve has to note, not all that surprising. Of course the demodog found its way back and let itself into Billy’s house. Of course Billy apparently thinks it’s a pet. He’s worse than Dustin. This is just what the people Steve hangs around do.

“…that’s not a dog,” he finally says, after spending too long staring at the leathery monster napping on Billy’s couch. Billy pauses in slurping his coffee to snort.

“Demo _dog_.” He grins when Steve stares at him. “What? You thought I didn’t hear any of that last night?”

“It’s still a monster, Billy,” Steve says, and even in his own ears, the protest sounds weak. Like he already knows this isn’t going to work.

“You know what your problem is, Harrington? You try to put things into boxes too much.” Billy sits up, and the demodog shift to lay with its head hanging off the couch. “It’s like a tomato being a fruit. Doesn’t matter. You still don’t put ketchup on your ice cream.”

Steve looks at him blankly, groping for the metaphor he knows is probably here, but he’s not good at this shit even when he’s actually having a good day. Which he isn’t. “…is a tomato really a fruit?”

Billy rolls his eyes. “What I’m saying is, we’re going to the pet store. Then you can take me to get my car.” He pats Steve’s back as he passes him, whistling sharply. The demodog launches itself off the couch and follows Billy. Mr. Hargrove, still standing at the front door like he’s in some sort of shock, makes a choked sob and cowers away as Billy and the demodog pass him by.

Steve stares at the empty couch, at the fading indentation where the demodog was laying. It already feels less real. He leans forward to look out the window, watches the leathery creature trotting beside Billy, claws clicking on the driveway. Yep, it’s real. He sighs and pulls his own coffee free, discarding the drink carrier on the arm of the couch as he turns and follows Billy out.

“Nice to meet you,” he says over his shoulder belatedly at the man half crumpled against the wall beside the door.

“Car, Harrington!” Billy calls, slapping the roof of the Beamer.

“Yeah, I’m coming!” Steve calls, shaking himself into gear. This is apparently what he’s going to be dealing with today. Might as well set some ground rules. “Your dog better not tear up my seats, Hargrove.”


End file.
